The need for portability and ease in capturing and saving information from various locations away from a user's office or work has resulted in a proliferation of portable electronic devices, such as digital cameras, personal digital assistants, and notebook computers. With the proliferation of portable electronic devices, the use of form factor cards adapted for use with these devices is steadily increasing as well, and the uncertainty of the portable electronic device market has also spilled over to the form factor card market.
The uncertainty of the form factor card market has resulted in several form factor card standards jockeying to become the dominant standard. The term “form factor card” is a general term often used to describe a memory card employing a variety of different standards, such as a SONY Memory Stick or Compact Flash card, but also applies to cards that perform other functions, including I/O cards such as serial cards, Ethernet cards, fax/modem cards, wireless pagers, and multimedia cards. Unfortunately, since none of the existing or emerging card standards are able to meet 100% of customer needs, a dominant standard has not emerged and is unlikely to emerge in the foreseeable future.
Consequently, a memory card manufacturer is forced to supply separate memory cards that accommodate the myriad of existing and emerging memory card technologies. If a memory card manufacturer wants to compete in the market, the memory card manufacturer must take into account all of the different memory card standards, which include both device interface standards and storage technology standards. For example, if there are N interfaces in the market and M different storage technologies, then the memory card manufacturer may design N times M memory cards employing different control systems to offer a full portfolio of memory cards and compete in the memory card market. This results in significant delays and could require many months to specify, design, verify, fabricate, and test the memory card before it may be brought to market. For example, a typical design period may encompass 18 months.
A need exists for a manufacturer to be able to leverage the development of memory cards by allowing the most efficient use of resources and accelerating time to market without increasing the cost of producing a memory card.